distortion

Borrowed from Latin distortio, distortionis, from distortus.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪsˈtɔːʃən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)ʃən

distortion (countable and uncountable, plural distortions)

1. An act of distorting.
2. A result of distorting.
3. A misrepresentation of the truth.

   The story he told was a bit of a distortion.

   • 1999 July 9, Bernard Burgoyne, “The Mind”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     The conscious mind refuses to admit any failure to perceive, and puts in its place a series of rationalisations which are fabrications and distortions of the real nature of things.

   • 2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, page 204:

     Remembering is an act of re-creation and therefore subject to distortion and fictionalization: 'real' memories become tales, and tales become 'memories'.

4. Noise or other artifacts caused in the electronic reproduction of sound or music.

   This recording sounds awful due to the distortion.

5. An effect used in music, most commonly on guitars in rock or metal.
6. (optics) An aberration that causes magnification to change over the field of view.

• deformation
• disfigurement

• distort